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The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment
In early 1919, Germany put in place a new government to begin rebuilding the country after its crushing defeat in World War I. But the right-wing forces that had led the country into the War and lost the War conspired even before it was over to destroy the new government, the "Weimar Republic." They succeeded.
The U.S. faces a similar "Weimar Moment." The devastating collapse of the economy after eight years of Republican rule has left the leadership, policies, and ideology of the right utterly discredited. But, as was the case with Germany in 1919, Republicans do not intend to allow the new government to succeed. They will do everything they can to undermine it. If they are successful, the U.S. may yet go the way of Weimar Germany.
World War I left Germany utterly devastated. The landed aristocrats, industrial magnates, wealthy financiers, weapons makers, and the officer corps of the military that formed the locus of right wing power were completely discredited. Their failure in provoking and prosecuting the War was catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.
The economy was destroyed. Prices were at 800% of pre-war levels and rising quickly. Agriculture, pillaged for the War, lay in ruins. Social insurance payments for the War's injured, to widows and orphans, and newly unemployed soldiers were astronomical. And all this was before the cost of rebuilding was even begun.
At the same time, Germany faced massive reparations payments to the Allied victors, France and England. But Germany's foreign properties had been confiscated and its colonies turned over to the victors. The combination of these conditions, both domestic and international, made it extraordinarily difficult for the German economy to recover.
As a result of the failure of the right, the German people elected a moderately leftist government to lead the nation's rebuilding. It was named the Weimar Republic for the city in which the new post-imperial constitution was written. The new government was led by Friedrich Ebert, head of the German Socialist Party.
But the country's new parliamentary system had allowed dozens of parties to run, making it impossible for any one party to win an outright majority. Ebert's party had achieved the highest portion of votes, 38%, in the first post-War elections, held in January 1919. Ebert would have to govern by coalition.
It was at this time that the right wing made its crucial decision. Despite its shocking, naked failure over the prior decade, despite the horrific devastation it had wrought on the German people, despite the discrediting of everything they had purported to stand for, they would fight Ebert, his new government, and its plans for recovery. They would do everything they could to make sure that the new government failed.
Their strategy was two-fold: first, stoke the resentment of the population about the calamitous state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions had been created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretended to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.
And stoking resentment was easy to do. Just before the War ended, the military concocted its most sensational lie: the German army hadn't actually been defeated. It had been "stabbed in the back" by communists, traitors, and Jews. It was an easy lie to sell. It entwined an attack on an alien political ideology - liberalism- with the latent, pervasive myth of German racial superiority.
The second strategy of the right was to prevent the new government from succeeding. To begin with, success of the left would conspicuously advertise the failure of the right. Moreover, success by the left would legitimize republican government, so hated by the oligarchs of the right. Much better for the people to be ruled by the self-aggrandizing right-wing autocracy that had governed Germany for centuries.
So the rightists set out to do everything they could to make it impossible for the leftists to govern. They would use parliamentary maneuver, shifting coalitions, domination of the new mass media, legislative obstruction, staged public relations spectacles, relentless pressure by narrow but powerful interests, judicial intimidation and, eventually, outright murder of their political opponents.
Contrition for their abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those had nothing to do with it. All they possessed was a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.
Eventually, they succeeded. Every setback in recovery - and there would inevitably be many - was met with hysterical demonizing of the left wing government. The lie was repeated relentlessly that the government was run by communists, traitors, and Jews-the same furtive cabal that had purportedly stabbed the country in the back at the end of the War. They steadily chipped away at the efficacy and, thereby, the legitimacy of successive republican governments.
By the time of the Great Depression, Adolph Hitler's ironically named National Socialist Party had become the biggest vote getter in the nation. The Nazis had once been derided as the lunatic fringe of the far right. But the "respectable" right-wing power brokers who had started and lost the Great War anointed Hitler Chancellor in January, 1933.
He immediately suspended the constitution, abolishing most civil liberties. He outlawed opposition parties, began a massive military build-up and a relentless propaganda campaign, and set Germany and the world onto the path of the greatest destruction it would ever know.
America now faces its own "Weimar moment."
The failure of right wing policy and leadership over the past eight years, especially in matters economic, is comparable to Germany's right-wing failure in World War I. It is catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.
Consider:
According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of the entire world's wealth has been destroyed in the recent financial collapse. In the U.S. alone, between housing and the stock market, more than $18 trillion in wealth has already been destroyed.
The private mega-banks that anchor the financial systems of the western world are bankrupt. This makes it all but impossible to jump-start the western world's economies which are heavily dependent on bank-system credit to operate.
More than 10,000 homes go into foreclosure every day. More than 20,000 people lose their job every day. And the collapse is accelerating, developing its own self-reinforcing dynamic. Job losses breed foreclosures, reducing demand, leading to more job losses and further degradation of the financial system. None of the stopgaps designed to stanch the bleeding have yet worked. There is no bottom in sight.
Meanwhile, debt has risen to astronomical levels. Reagan and Bush I quadrupled the national debt in only twelve years. Bush II doubled it again in only eight. It is now ten times higher than it was in 1980 when Reagan was elected. Total public and private debt exceeds 300% of GDP, half again higher than it was in 1929.
The government's unfunded liabilities, promises it has made to the American people but for which no payment source can be identified, now exceed $60 trillion, a literally inconceivable sum that can never, will never, be paid. Federal Reserve economist Lawrence Kotlikoff has suggested that the U.S. government is "actuarially bankrupt."
The full measure of the nation's plight is revealed in Hillary Clinton's first trip as Secretary of State. It was to China, to beg them to fund Obama's new fiscal deficits. Without loans from China, the U.S. economy cannot be revived. The significance of this cannot be overstated: the U.S. no longer exercises sovereignty over its own economic affairs. That sovereignty now resides in the hands of China, the U.S.'s greatest long-term rival.
Thanks to Republican policies of massive debt and shipping jobs abroad, the U.S. has technically become a colony of China. It exports raw materials and imports finished goods, together with the capital to make up the difference. Should the Chinese decide not to lend the trillions of dollars the U.S. is begging for, the U.S. economy will implode, plummeting onto itself in a World Trade Center-like collapse that will leave dust clouds circling the planet for decades.
Notwithstanding the destruction inflicted on the economy by Republican policies, the most devastating breakdown is in the intellectual foundation on which right wing economic ideology itself is premised. Free market doctrine, the secular religion of right-wing America, is in utter, irretrievable shambles.
One of the most lofty tenets on which free markets are premised is their claim for themselves that they are "efficient," that is, that market prices always reflect "fundamental values" of assets. But if that's true, how could the world's largest insurance company, AIG, have lost 99.5% of its market value in only 18 months? How could the world's largest bank, Citibank, have lost 98% of its value over the same period?
How could the world's largest brokerage company, Merrill Lynch, have gone bankrupt and need to be bought by Bank of America? How could the world's largest car company, General Motors, have lost 95% of its value and stand on the threshold of extinction? How could the world's largest industrial conglomerate, General Electric, have lost 85% of its value in only 18 months?
If the largest companies in the world, those at the very heart of the capitalist system itself, can lose virtually all of their value in only 18 months, what is the possible meaning of the phrases "efficient markets" and "fundamental value"?
The other core tenets of free market ideology are equally compromised. Major actors are clearly not rational - a breakdown of theological proportions admitted by no less an avatar of the cult than its pope himself, Alan Greenspan. Free markets clearly cannot, will not, regulate themselves. It is precisely their innate, irrepressible propensity for sociopathic greed and predatory fraud that has brought the whole of the world's economy to the precipice of collapse.
Free markets clearly do not align risk and reward, allocating capital to its most productive uses, as its promoters advertise. They clearly do not automatically return to equilibrium, but must be bailed out with trillions of dollars of injections from the shrinking coffers of the public to the ever-bulging coffers of a private priesthood of pillage and plunder.
And in perhaps the greatest indictment of all, one going back to its primeval roots in Adam Smith's eighteenth century opus, The Wealth of Nations, the unrestrained behavior of self-interested individuals clearly, manifestly, does not "coalesce as if by an Invisible Hand to the greatest good for the greatest number."
These are not peripheral premises that have failed. They are not tangential tenets. Efficient markets. Rational actors. Market equilibrium. Risk and reward. Self interest. These are the essential sacraments on which the entire free market system is founded. They are in tatters. And it isn't that any one of them has been discredited by the glaring, merciless force of events. All of them have been. All of them together. And all of them at the same time.
Free markets have long been the basis for a legitimate - though rightly debated - economic policy framework. But they have become little more than a robotically-recited cultural catechism, a mindless mantra mumbled to mask the looting of the nation's resources that is the true purpose of Republican economic policy as demonstrated by the staggering upward transfers of wealth that inevitably occur under Republican regimes. A more complete, conspicuous, catastrophic, and irrefutable repudiation of right wing leaders, right wing policies, and right wing ideology could not possibly be contrived.
So what is the right wing response?
They have adopted the strategy and tactics of the failed right wing plotters in Weimar Germany. First, stoke the resentment of the population about the increasingly dire state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions were created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretend to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.
Second, prevent the new government from succeeding in any meaningful endeavor. The Republicans have set all their efforts to doing everything they can to make sure the Obama administration fails. Rush Limbaugh's infamous, "I hope he fails" pronouncement is only the beginning of the fomenting of hatred from the right. As Limbaugh said, "Let's be honest. Every Republican in America is hoping for Obama's failure."
The same malignant hope oozes unadulterated from all the other Dogpatch Demagogues that rent themselves out to the Republican party to foment resentment against anything liberal: Joe the "Plumber," Rick Santelli, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, and virtually every other wing-nut operative whose intellectual stock in trade has been vaporized by the collision of right-wing policies with objective reality.
Equally so for the "respectable" members of the party, the all-but-three Republican members of Congress who refused to sign on to Obama's first stimulus package and continue to grandstand against every effort toward any form of progress. Contrition for their own abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those have nothing to do with it. All they possess is a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.
And what else can they do? Bereft of ideas, bankrupt in ideology, architects of collapse, obstruction is all they have. If Obama is successful, it will not only advertise the full extent of their failure, it will provide a model of liberal governance that would render Republicans irrelevant for decades, much as FDR's success left them out in the political cold for an entire generation. Liberal failure is a matter of life and death for Republicans.
And it's not at all clear that the liberals won't fail. No one should underestimate the task at hand. Never before - not even during the Great Depression - has the country inherited such a daunting, intractable set of economic problems: a debt burden so crushing; inequality so vast; a loss of financial sovereignty so constricting; an intellectual edifice so bankrupt; a private economy so uncompetitive; or an opposition so callously self interested in its own recovery and so cavalierly disinterested in the nation's.
The economy has been so damaged, successful rescue requires threading a series of policy needles, each of them so complex in their own right that none could be solved by any administration of the past 50 years. This includes rehabilitating and re-regulating the nation's banking system, restructuring health care, reducing national dependence on oil, reviving manufacturing so as to reduce the trade deficit, rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure, dealing with a soaring national debt, trying to resuscitate a collapsing housing market, and all the while maintaining the safety net under 77 million baby boomers entering retirement with a net worth 60% what it was only 18 months ago.
Success will require much more than luck, hard work, brilliant policy, or soaring rhetoric. It will require cooperation and contribution from every American. It is those two offerings, cooperation and contribution, that Republicans are intent on withholding, the better to ensure Obama's failure. Simply put, the Republicans hate Democrats more than they love America.
If they succeed in derailing Obama's efforts, the cost will be incalculable.
After World War I, one of the consequences of the liberal government's failure was Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a genius for exploiting the resentment of the German people for their condition. More than 80% of the Nazi party's members were unemployed. It was these legions of idle thugs who made up the ranks of Hitler's brownshirt militia, the SA. The right wing oligarchy that had set out from the beginning to destroy the Weimar Republic recognized the potency of resentment and Hitler's genius at exploiting it. It was they who sponsored Hitler's ascension to Chancellor in 1933.
Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s.
The Republican propensity for fascism must not be underestimated. Witness their phony justifications for the war in Iraq, fanning the flames of nationalistic aggression, just as Hitler did with Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in the 1930s. Consider their symbiotic embrace of corporate interests in the oil, weapons, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, finance, and other industries-the same type of corporate interests that sponsored Hitler's ascent to power. Look at their efforts to dismantle civil liberties with the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. Or their relentless, pervasive propaganda laundered through their corporate-owned right-wing media machine.
These are the classic hallmarks of fascism. The strategy is to obstruct recovery, facilitate collapse, and then incite the faux-populism of public resentment to re-install a corporatist oligarchy which has failed, but which will not abide a reduction of its privileges or a diminution of its control. It is a fetid, seditious agenda, awaiting only its own latter day mustachioed messiah for its final fulfillment.
World War I was a once-in-a-millennium upset in the architecture of global power. In four years, it shifted the center of that power from Europe to the United States. But failure now by the U.S. will shift that center once again, from the United States to China, out of the western world where it has resided for the past 500 years. The psychic shock to the billion-odd people living in western civilization, with its liberal democracies, capitalist economies, and Enlightenment ideals, will be incalculable, irretrievable.
This shift may be inevitable and only a matter of time. It is quite possible that the damage inflicted on the western world's economy by rapacious Republicans is already beyond repair. But it will be tragedy beyond measure if such a shift is consummated by the very wrecking crew that took us down the road to ruin, all the while so unctuously proclaiming "patriotism" as its crowning ideal. They are not patriots and their goal is not the revival of American power. It is the revival of their own power, even at the expense of America's. They represent a very dangerous threat to the nation's future.
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212 Comments so far
Show AllIf Bush could suspend the right to a fair and speedy trial, why not freedom of speech?
hahahaha, these are the heroes of the capitalist, calvinists republican party evangelical lunatics of America: Jimmy Swagart, Pat Robertson, the evangelical pastor of Chevy Chase's movie Fletch, Joe the Plumber, Rick Santelli, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Bill O Rilley, Sean Hannity, Joel Osteen, Lou Dobbs, and tell me more capitalist, free market, libertarian, right-wing, conservative-heroes praised and idolized by Republican-evangelical Pro-Israel, pro-Starbucks, zionist, warmonger loons
diet_lord: we might want to add 2 former Marxists-turned neocons to the list: Christopher Hitchens and David Whatshisname? He wrote that asshole book RADICAL SON.
It cant repeat itself exactly.
I think Germany was more of a work ethic based culture--not so in the US.
Americans are probably much lazier and much more fragmented.
China is also tied to the US. If the US sinks, it also affects China.
Its not a one way street.
Too many pundits (on both sides) have a career to maintain. So they need to write an article each week even if they dont have anything new to say.
Some are scare mongering, some are hopeful.
The biggest error in it is to ignore the corruption of the Democrats.
webber, it's tossed around so often that it sounds like "common sense", but the idea that "americans are lazy" is pure fantasy. look at average annual hours worked in any OECD table and top of the list every year is the US, by a long, long ways compared to some countries. if you asked the average american, who works harder, americans or japanese (#2 on OECD list), almost everyone would say the japanese, and they'd be wrong.
intellectually lazy, indeed. but being massively overworked and overfed but under-nourished has something to do with it.
Weimar Moment seems to be both quaint and non-analogous.
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.” - John Maynard Keynes
I am prepared to believe George Lakeoff when he says that 98% of all thought is unconsciousness. It is impossible for us to escape assumptions and patterns of thought of which we are not even aware.
its about god and guns, today americans are the most religious of the enlightened western populations (as though western civilization is a good idea). they were when they flocked to north america in the early 1600's - as they proceeded to kill everyone and everything in their sight, all in the name of god and enlightened ideals (fascism a 20th century expression of extreme devotion to empire - but empires are timeless).
well, our little anglo-corporate enterprise has expanded exponentially since then and has detrimentally infected the rest of the world.
we now sell more guns than anyone else, to scrupulous people like mexican drug cartels, colmbian drug lords, opium war lords in afghanastan, religious fanatics in israel, and on and on...
we are a fascist society and have been for sometime, i think most americans are in complete denial of this simple fact. if you talk w/ a worker at boeing or microsoft or any other military contractor (spread out through every congressional district) - how they feel about making money off of war - 'oh well, i suppose everyone's gotta make a living (think of yourself before you think about anyone else in the world - the american creed).
as long as individual americans are armed to the teeth while they see themselves as biblicaly moral and superior to others (hedges - american fascism, the film jesus camp) america will be ripe for a theocratic military regime.
the economic collapse provides an opening for all parties, as the unemployment rate rises higher and higher - the legitimacy of elected officials and public officials (like cramer's public self flagellation on the daily show) will diminish.
as the loss of legitimacy (already known to the far left and the far right) becomes more apparent (ie.. the stimulus packages, corporate bailout plans fail to stem the bloodletting of the capitalist system) - both the left and the right can make their argument.
those disagreements will eventually be in the streets, i do not see the american masses coalescing for their own benefit outside of the parameters of the electoral process unless it gets very ugly.
in the interm i can imagine the proliferation of right wing vigilantes - murdering political dissidents and persecuting the undesirables - becoming more common.
i would prefer the country break up into regions (pacifica, new england, the south, rocky mtn region) rather than be subjected to a bloody revolution, let us migrate. but as margret atwood described in the handmaid's tale, they'd rather imprison us - use our slave labor and if possible reeducate us until we can utter the words - jesus is my savior and i am your friend. ask the native americans on 'indian' reservations how this plays out.
rush limbaugh is our friend.........really - he loves you...
...peace...
iowablackbird: I heard that Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Silverman were engaged to be married. That sucks -- I wanted to marry her; and shoot him!
I would just like to say that what has happened here is that there has been a rationalization of people again, workers again. Remember the lumberjacks, the seamstresses and the secretaries, they are now all Kerouacs, whacked out of their jobs because the amount of people needed to get something, anything done anymore has been rationalized. Now is the time of innovation, the time when people do things that might not be profitable for themselves, but maybe profitable for others, the sick, the poor, the young; teach them, feed them, clothe them and minister to them, don't think of yourself, have faith that one like you will be there for you when it is time to pick up your pieces after the good work.
This is the bane of capitalism and the reason that it cannot go on forever, it is an eating machine, made to take the most and leave the least, but this kind of system is not life, this is something else. It is time to pick up the pieces, time to go back to the earth, time to use hands and arms for other things than massaging a plastic rectangle to relay your thoughts on what the next best ad campaign will be, for I can make an ad campaign in my bedroom tomorrow, but it isn't important, is it?
What is probably more important is that kid who needs to learn to read, so go and teach him, or the guy who is looking for a job, set something up with him, money is not the only way to exchange goods, barter is good and great when the elites cut the money supply, how many eggs is a quart of milk worth, enough to make pancakes, who knows, who cares, the point here is to get over the fear, the hurt, that enslaved mentality and open up your mind to the possibilities over the next hill, maybe that is why the obama man wants to focus on the future, because bushes can always be trimmed, but that kid needs to learn how to multiply, figure, how much is a yard of wood worth in nails, enough to build a house?
my love to all of you suffering, my love to the people who eat my food everyday, my love to all of you wondering, when will the pain end, well maybe it will when you relieve the pain for someone else.
I have tried to live according to your suggestions. I believe it is the only alternative to an eventual chaotic blood letting after (God forbid) a final all-out desperate attempt to force the old greed system to work.
Bless you PatriotisVeritas. Your "Let it Be" way for human animals to live together is our only hope. My prayer is that it spreads like a pandemic over the planet.
I know its not easy, but it does catch because it is the logical way to live. My hope is your hope, be strong, and thanks to you and the others for the good words, they are really encouraging.
PatriotisVeritos: you sound like the hippy I once was back in the late 60/early 70s. PEACE AND LOVE BROTHER!
How would you describe yourself now?
"Rationalized"? Do you speak English?
The problem is not the increase in productivity per se'. It is that, with the advent if rightist rule in 1980, the product of that increased productivity has not been shared broadly across society. It has been funnelled to the top 1%, those who actually do not do much but move paper around.
For a contrary picture, see the US economy from 1950 - 1970, when huge gains in productivity were shared broadly across society. They are mirror images of one another, and demonstrate clearly that the right wing agenda is destructive and criminal.
As a poet, I took license, definition number 6. I hope its not too beastly for you.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rationalized
PatriotisVeritas. Your indictment, you are indignant-Carnivores welcome overseers no mas, alas, being prey was for another day?
Rapacious loving evisceration for sale,
Need credit you can get it,
Welcome to the
Carnival of carnivores, prey tell, will you feed the child,
Faith Love & Hope,
But Faith without Acts is Dead says PatriotisVeritas,
A corpse, The Land of the Free has 1000 military bases around the world to steal freedom....
To Faith, Love, To Hope. Who said 'Faith without Acts is Dead?' Oh yeah, one smart Pharisee.
Joe. I love that Jew. And the Jew he loved so very very very much as well.
'Faith without works is dead' is attributed to James, the brother of Jesus. He was about as far from being a pharisee as was possible.
My apologies Nietzsche, Thank You for catching that, I thought Paul said/wrote those words....
Well, I'm starting a Bible Study next Sunday, clearly I need too,
Respectfully, Joe.
I understand the Republican bashing, they certainly deserve it, but this article is intellectually dishonest in several points.
General Motors has been slowly dying for 2 decades yet it's mentioned her in a sentence that speaks of the recent (18 month) decline in the stock market.
That 70 Trillion dollar unfunded liability the Government holds is something the Republicans fought tooth and nail against. Medicare, SS, and Medicaid aren't GOP programs.
One of the more expensive components, the pharmaceutical portion, was a product of the GOP during the Bush years.
Only a GOP actuarial addict would think that "$70 trillion unfunded liablity" is due and payable immediately.
Social Security and Medicaid are 'pay as you go' programs. They are not insurance policies; they are transfer payments from current wealth, and are part of the social contract. It is intellectually dishonest to say that $70 trillion is due now. What is due now are the payments that are budgeted for this year. As the social contract is shredded, those of us expecting to retire ought not to have those in our plans (which means I'll be working until I drop). Despite the right wing's anger, they have no compunction claiming their payments; and the vast majority of Americans support both these programs and Medicare, which is a hybrid insurance / transfer program, and also part of the social contract.
I agree, GM has been dying since (I figure) 1960, along with Chrysler and Ford -- all three abandoned innovation then, were taken over by accountants and reorineted toward current quarter earnings rather than long term investment.
"He immediately suspended the constitution, abolishing most civil liberties. He ...., began a massive military build-up and a relentless propaganda campaign..."
Bush or Hitler?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
The only downside I see of the pending economic destruction of the USA is that it will drag the rest of the world down with it...the USA has been the main source of evil in the world for hundreds of years now....starting with the genocide of the American indian, right up to the genocide of the Iraqi people....good riddance I say.
If the cost of freeing the world from the creeping fascism of the USA is my taking a major financial hit...so be it. Future generations will be better off without the nation of greed and avarice dominating the globe.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
alas for us americans, and many others around the globe, you may be right about "salvation" lying in us economic collapse. for some real insanity, check this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/washington/15military.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
the us, under saint obama, is rethinking the "2 wars" doctrine. when i saw this headline, i skipped it, thinking, oh well, based on our experience in iraq/afghanistan, they are rethinking that the u.s. can fight 2 wars at once.
WRONG! rather, they are thinking we need to be able to fight EVERYBODY at once, land, air, space, cyberspace, hearts, minds, etc., etc.
thank you obama, for reinvigorating american's lunatic fantasies that they can conquer the world. HOPE WE CAN BELIEVE IN! whoo hoo! everyone will be dead but us. amen.
obama's sobriquet should be:
continuity you can believe in
yes we con!
I would argue that these problems were not created by just the republican wing of the one-party system but rather by both. The democratic faction followed in goose-step fashion, voting for all of the destructive policies of the past 30 yrs. And let us not forget the Patriot Act -- so-called -- since it was mentioned, that all members of congress (save but one) signed on without having even read what the hell was in it. Destruction of the socio/political, economic system is due to the policies of both factions of the U.S. Business Party who have always represented the capitalist class first and foremost. The only thing that can save us is a mass popular movement organized to the teeth to prevent these thugs from destroying anymore of what already belongs to those of us who have created the wealth. Putting our faith blindly, in some savior such as Obama is not the answer. The power resides with us collectivley!
davethered March 15th, 2009 5:17 pm
"The power resides with us collectively!"
dave, i agree w/ your conclusion. i see america as an imperial enterprise whose basic structure resembles an 18th century business (president, vice president, secretary of blah blah blah) - it's time to reclaim the economy and the government. it's time to stop watching sick people die from lack of medical attention and it's time to recognize our entire m.o. as a country (national ethos) is fucked.
as to the fate of rush limbaugh, as one who has consumed lsd -' -' -' -' -' -'
- from cnn ... post revolutionary north america 2018...
{rush limbaugh will be living in a 12' by 12' Plexiglas cube - performance art space - for three month durations for the next five years. the traveling art exhibit which will debut in central park on march 21 2018 before moving to grant park in chicago and peoples park in berkeley.
the exhibit features the convicted propaganda minister of president palin - rush limbaugh - living in a 12' by 12' Plexiglas cube box. americans will be able to watch mr limbaugh sleep, shit - eat (food fed to him through a trap door twice a day) and write.
mr limbaugh will be allowed to reflect upon his condition as he will be able to maintain a journal w/ a number #2 pencil and an unlimited supply of blank paper.
fortunately, he will not have a microphone and will be unable to speak with any other person until he is reintroduced into the general prison population, after the traveling exhibit is over. we're hoping cnn can have a camera focused on the desk, so the world can understand the mind of this master criminal.
after the traveling exhibit visits the 20 largest metropolitan areas in n america - mr limbaugh will join his lunatic fringe co-conspirators - k rove, s palin, lou dobbs, the turncoat w blitzer and the mastermind g bush I - at fort leavenworth kansas.
where rush will be forced to listen to 'never mind the bullocks' by the sex pistols 24 hours a day in his cell, until the day he is reunited w/ his maker.
in his name -- here's to you davethered - back to you bernie....}
...peace...
Sioux Rose
IOWA: Glad to see you posting again. Thanks for the laugh, and/or sense of karmic release!
Thank you Mr. Freeman for your clarification of the real dangers we face. I can personally find no ray of light to give hope, save one. I find it likely that any shred of hope will give way to resignation as the collapse broadens it's scope and intensity. This is the beginning of a swift and certain end for all those excepting some who have an honest understanding and respect for Spirit.
Thank you for that article. Finally!
Over the years, I have come to realize with increasing horror whenever I visited the USA, that Republicans AND their followers are to a large degree indeed closet or even overt fascists. Not as a figure of speech, but really. Yes, they basically want to overthrow governments. They have already "fixed" two elections and tried a "cold" coup d'etat with Clinton, after all.
Right-wing radio hosts in America are on par with the most frenzied mullahs who preach in countries where America pretends that it is trying to teach them tolerance and freedom. How about starting at home?
As I keep saying here in Europe,"You wouldn't even have to elaborate some sophisticated psychological tests with at least (my conservative estimate) a third of the US population in order to unearth some hidden fascist traits; theirs are quite openly visible."
And most of what goes down as "Republican" ideology in the US today is only espoused by extreme right-wing populists in Europe. But at least nobody calls those guys "moderate" here.
What I don't get, though, is how come the American Right keeps getting away with all their lies, calling any semblance of civilized policies "communist", while nobody among the Democrats calls many of the Republicans what they really are - and contrary to their allegations, that label can be documented and proved: Many of them are simply fascists.
the difference between our democrats and the republican fascists, is that there is no difference. the leaders are all paid by the same paymaster. the american piblic has now been trained to believe that there is a difference, by allowing them to squabble amongst each other. most americans do not know what a fascist is, lest recognize one.
Although I agree with Robert Freeman's thesis in general, I must take exception to his main rhetorical device, which consists of a simplistic projection of contemporary America onto interwar Germany, which was a much different place and time.
Frederick the Great abolished torture and instituted broad religious tolerance (even for Moslems!). Bismarck unified the country and provided health care and strong unions. Wilhelm II defended the right of workers to negotiate the terms of their labour. It seems to me that America could use some of those "masturbatory right-wing autocrats".
Imperial Germany was the most peaceful of the Great Powers. In the century between the Congress of Vienna and the Great War it fought only a few wars: the internal wars of unification, a war with the Austro-Hungarian Empire to free Germany from its influence, a war with France that France had started, and what we would call a "multinational police action" against China. Germany had a few colonies and trading posts, none of which it had taken by force. In the decade before the Great War Germany resisted ever-greater provocations by the Entente, decided on war only when driven into a corner, and was the last to order general mobilization. (See Edward McCullough's meticulously documented book How the First World War Began.) When the Germans did fight, they usually won, or at least acquitted themselves honourably against superior odds. The contrast with American behaviour needs no belabouring.
Hitler was a small-minded creep with an unerring instinct for demagoguery and no strategic sense—in short, the perfect creature of a democracy, rather like Bill Clinton. (That is probably why he understood so well the democratic governments he was negotiating with.) Before the war, Hitler had borrowed the Englishman Houston Stuart Chamberlain's ideas on white supremacy, and fascist parties formed in both Britain and America. The German aristocrats saw Hitler for what he was, and despised him. They repeatedly tried to depose or kill him both before and during the war, and some of them gave their lives in the attempt. Every July 20 the Germans still honour their memory.
As for the Weimar government, it was essentially an occupation government tasked with the continuation of the Germano-Anglic War by economic means, and the Germans had no more obligation to cheer it on than the Iraqis and Afghans have to the regimes imposed on them by the very same power. The Weimar Republic had so little competence or legitimacy that it came within a hair's-breadth of collapsing when Hitler launched his extraordinarily ill-managed "Beer Hall Putch" in 1923. Could even the most regressively libidinous "right-wing autocrats" claim credit for that, in a disorganized country with very diverse media and next to no television?
Last, I need hardly point out that an overabundance of parties represented in the federal legislature is not America's problem.
"Hitler was a small-minded creep with an unerring instinct for demagoguery and no strategic sense—in short, the perfect creature of a democracy, rather like Bill Clinton."
Come on man. I'm no Clinton fan, but the dude was a Rhodes scholar---say what you want about his politics, but a small-minded creep? How would you describe GW Bush, I wonder?
"...forty percent of the entire world's wealth has been destroyed..."
there was NO "destruction" of anything... it was transferred...
.
like musical chairs... or hot potatoe games... the last one holding the inflated asset... gets "destroyed"...
everyone played this game... repeat - E-V-E-R-Y-one... some better than others... some with more money than others... some with more inside information than others... some who wished they good play like the "big guys" and played the game in their fantasies...
we were "all" one stock pick... one "deal" away from retirement in luxury at 28...
"this" is america folks. welcome to it. democracy. rule of law. all the right furniture. but once you're in... it's grab as much as fast as you can... and hope not to get caught... on the way out.
gotta love it. notice how none of the "transferred to" folks are complaining or up in arms about anything... the ones unfortunate enough to be publicly identified are doing damage control... but not really changing the tune...
we're just setting up the chairs for another round or musical 'assets"...
Do please remember that much, if not all, that wealth was artificial wealth produced only by speculation in real estate, index funds and Credit Default Swaps.
That was not redistributed; it evaporated, as it should have.
Real wealth, alas, is based on productive capacity, and we have exported much of what existed prior to 1980. What we have left are our intellectual resources and the actual real estate that underlay all that speculation.
A simplistic overview.
"By the time of the Great Depression, Adolph Hitler's ironically named National Socialist Party had become the biggest vote getter in the nation. The Nazis had once been derided as the lunatic fringe of the far right. But the "respectable" right-wing power brokers who had started and lost the Great War anointed Hitler Chancellor in January, 1933."
Actually the nazis never had a majority vote as this paragraph implies Until they had smashed the opposition and had another election.
the writer misses the fact that the 'left center' socialist govt actually colluded with the right, and allowed the frei corps (sp?) tp exist, and allowed the funded junker shock troops in order to smash the left.
He is stating de facto, that the 'right' is the fascist vanguard, while the'liberal' democrats are the opposition.
in fact, as we can see with the democrats full support of the militarization of our police forces, and near complete agreement in imperialism, 'the opposition' would surely align with the right to smash any large popular bottom up left peoples movement in
the USA.
That is the real lesson to learn from germany, spain, and italy. That the 'liberal' power brokers will align with fascists anytime a truly democratic land and liberty movement arises in a capitalist democracy.
we are in a horrible situation here. And it requires a militant bottom up dedicated non leninist peoples movement.
And it requires, we never listen to 'experts' such as this.
Only fascism and dictatorship, left and right, fills a vacuum or a 'leveling'.
occupy, resist, and produce. land and freedom. vote, in your spare time....but fight in every hour of your life.
Tommys1961: I think you have hit the nail right on the head when you stated that what is required is a "militant bottom up dedicated non Leninist peoples movement." Emphasis on "NON LENINIST." There are still so many old-fashioned Marxists who believe in the Leninist model of development. We should all by now know that the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariate" became in reality, the dictatorship OVER the proletariate. Only a genuine bottom up people's movement can save us from this mess. Waiting for a savior such as Obama who clearly does not represent the people is futile.
"That the 'liberal' power brokers will align with fascists anytime a truly democratic land and liberty movement arises in a capitalist democracy.
we are in a horrible situation here."
Glad you put "liberal" in quotations where it belongs. Calling conservative Democrats liberals shows how far to the right we have come since Nixon.
A fascist is a fascist. Thanks for reminding us of that. Democrats may be a lot of things, including corrupt and incompetent, but they are NOT fascists. Neo conservatives are. Liberals have become so intimidated by the barrage of name calling by right wingers that they are loath to fling terms. But one thing is for sure, a neo-conservative is nothing but a fascist. And a fascist is someone we can't afford to have around.
Disagree. Obama was a constitutional law profressor... yet he's keeping in tact the police state and Bush's state secret arguments. Dems are facists who throw the people a bone to fight over every now and again.
This article is missing a huge point. The Weimar Republic paid for everything by just printing money out of nothing. This led to huge inflation which destroyed the dollar. That author says the prices were "800%" of the prewar prices. Well, he never explains why.
The scariest part is that the federal reserve and the US treasurey is doing what the bankrupted Weimar did, they are just printing money out of thin air, which will destroy the currency. That is the lesson we should take from this.
Granted our monetary system has been based on nothing of tangible value for a while, but what has happened in the last year in terms of bailouts and stimulouses, is unprecedented. But just because the Weimars weren't pyscho facists who wanted to exterminate a group of people doesn't mean they were smart and did a good job of governing.
I understand that the authors point is that radical facism came to flourish because of these circumstances, but he turns it into republican bashing... as opposed to the democrats... who have been complicent with the destruction of this country. Both the repubs and dems are complicit in this BS monetary system that screws over everyone besides the top few percent. The party politicians are either too stupid or take advantage of the system at the expense of the citizen because they can.
And Germany's huge international debt came from somewhere... same goes for hitler start up money. To import everything he needed for his war machine he needed money from somewhere.
Ten,twelve or sixty trillions in deficit spending, we are headed to a command economy and the Republicans are gearing up to be the ones doing the commanding. Making sure that Obama fails puts them in the drivers seat. Hitler showed that inflation could be neutralized by restricting the free use of purchasing power (your banks creation of credit). We are just starting to get a good taste 'of that now' with more to come. So, I guess the question is; Do you want to return to yesterday to be led by people of the past eight years? of whom you know a great deal, or Obama and the future unclear as it will always remain. For in a fixed command universe there is no freedom only totalitarian slavery, (aka the Third Reich).
keep a wheel barrel handy, they were very much in vogue during this time, they are a handy tool. the greenback is toast.
The "Weimar Moment" came and went unnoticed with Reagan...
Dat's da fact Jack.
And America's 'Riechstag Fire' was 9/11.
The groundwork for this entire series of events was probably laid during VP Cheney's off the record meetings with the heads of the energy corporations back in early 2000.
Peak Oil and other peak resources were seen coming long ago. Plans were made accordingly, including but not limited to 'a new Pearl Harbour' and preparations for massive civil unrest (Halliburton/KBR built 'FEMA camp' detention centers). Everthing else has been window dressing.
Err, Reagan sowed the seeds of the current forest of foreclosures, bankruptcies and economic peril. But thanks for the strange analogy.
I think the economic downturn during President Carter's term (double digit inflation) might have been instigated by rightwing business interests pulling the rug out from under him (and us). Rather than make the generalization that Big Business was at fault, I suspect automobile-related business interests specifically, including finance, then, now, and the years between WWI-WWII.
When Henry Ford boasted He'd pay his employees enough so they could buy a Model 'T', he was NOT thinking of their best interests. He and other carmakers were dismantling the US Streetcar and Interurban electric rail networks to establish a "transportation monopoly" of automobiles.
Fabulous German car manufacturers had not begun to employ mass production techniques until 1929. German unions (which included communists and Jews) objected knowing their better paying, high-skilled jobs would be lost. The most powerful businesses in Germany, US and UK supported Hitler between the World Wars for his organization and opposition to labor rights in the automobile manufacturing and 'steel' industries. Prescott Bush handled US investment in major German Steel between 1930-1942.
Did automobile-related business interests have a dire motive to undermine President Carter's administration? Did the housing sector crash of the time have something to do with gas-guzzling American cars and single-occupancy vehicle commuting long-distance from far flung suburban subdivisions? Will bankers/financiers glibly finance subdivision housing knowing there'd be many cars to finance subsequently? Were automobile-related business interests 'desperate' to get Carter out of office?
An historic and phenomenal automobile techology 'breakthrough' occured during the Clinton era with the hybrid drivetrain. Hybrids have dozens of crucial advantages and significant benefits over hydrogen fuel cell and battery-electric vehicle technologies, standard drivetrains and internal combustion engines alone, no matter the fuel combusted, bio-fuel, combustable hydrogen, whatever, in safety, in energy systems compatability, in practical implementation, etc, etc.
Yet, GM proposes to cancel the Saturn hybrid models and promote the Volt hybrid which is aimed at the luxury car market. Chysler plans to cancel the PT Cruiser, a model seemingly ideal for hybrid conversion. Hybrid vehicles have too great a longevity, offering at least 30% more years of service or 200,000+ miles driven before replacement. They are the most logical way to reach the new CAFE standards and EPA emission reduction standards. GM and Chrysler are dragging their feet because their executive directors are international businessmen with no loyalty to the USA and its people. If Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac and Saturn can go on making cars without the umbrella corporation GM dictating their middleman terms, let GM go bankrupt.